Significance: Black spruce is the dominant tree species in boreal North America and has shaped forest flammability, carbon storage, and other landscape processes over the last several thousand years. However, climate warming and increases in wildfire activity may be undermining its ability to maintain dominance, shifting forests toward alternative forested and nonforested states. Using data from across North America, we evaluate whether loss of black spruce resilience is already widespread. Resilience was the most common outcome, but drier climatic conditions and more severe fires consistently undermine resilience, often resulting in complete regeneration failure. Although black spruce forests are currently moderately resilient, ongoing warming and drying may alter this trajectory, with large potential consequences for the functioning of this globally important biome.

Premise: Dispersal capacity primarily determines the spatial establishment patterns that drive range expansions and contractions in tree species. Seedling establishment in Baker cypress (Hesperocyparis bakeri [(Jeps.) Bartel]) relies predominantly on fire events, due to its cone serotiny, shade intolerance, and small seeds that require the optimal conditions of fire‐exposed, mineral soil seedbeds.Methods: We quantified the density and spatial distribution of post‐disturbance seedlings following the 2014 Eiler Fire in northern California and compared the observed recruitment to predictions from a mechanistic seed dispersal model.Results: Postfire recruitment was dense, averaging 11 seedlings/m², and occurred primarily in the first year after fire. We estimated the mean descent velocity of the wingless seeds as ~4 m/s, the highest value reported for any putatively wind‐dispersed tree species. The rapid seed descent contributed to markedly spatially constrained recruitment. Most seedlings (~81%) established within 5 m of the parent tree, and 94% established within 10 m. The maximum observed dispersal distance was 48.5 m; dispersal distance scaled linearly with canopy height. Distributions of modeled seed dispersal distance and observed seedling establishment in Baker cypress did not differ, demonstrating that wind disperses seeds a short distance because of the lack of a wing, and secondary dispersal appeared to be minimal at this recently burned site.Conclusions: If seed dispersal is solely reliant on wind, migration in response to rapid climate change will be impeded and potentially present difficulties in sustaining populations of this and other obligate seeder species with equally constrained dispersal.